Introduction

The importance of contact and surface effects in modern engineering and their combined effects has led the organisers to reconvene this 11th International Conference, which covers two related topics: Computational Methods and Experiments in Contact Mechanics and Surface Effects.

The aim of the conference is to encourage international cooperation amongst scientists and engineers and to exchange new ideas. It deals with fundamental and applied concepts in the interdisciplinary fields of surface and contact engineering, in particular focusing on the interplay between applied physics, materials science and computational methods.

About two decades ago, the emergence of the subject ‘contact and surface treatment’ was driven by the realisation that the surface is usually the most important part of any engineering component. Structural components fail by wear, corrosion, high cycle fatigue etc., that is to say, affected and initiated by the surface conditions. Consequently, an appropriate approach is to modify the surface layers of the base-metal in contact, so as to provide an enhanced performance. However, in many cases it is the combination of effects, e.g. of wear and corrosion, that is causing the damage and as a result this complexity makes the field of surface engineering so challenging. Also, the aspect of the substrate has been frequently overlooked in surface engineering with too much of an emphasis on the protective layers itself. The aforementioned aspects are reported and discussed in this conference.

In particular, the focal point in the conference is on contact mechanics, surface coating, damage mechanics, residual stress effects, laser surface treatment and mechanical surface treatment. Special emphasis is given to the application of advanced theoretical and experimental approaches.

The series began in Southampton, UK (1993); continued in Ferrara and Milan, Italy (1995); Oxford, UK and Madrid, Spain (1997); Stuttgart, Germany and Assisi, Italy (1999); Seville, Spain (2001); Crete, Greece (2003); Bologna, Italy (2005); the New Forest, UK (2007); the Algarve, Portugal (2009) and Malta (2011).